Surface engineer

A Surface Engineer specializes in modifying and improving the properties of material surfaces to enhance their performance, durability, and appearance. Their work focuses on protecting materials—often metals, ceramics, or polymers—against wear, corrosion, and environmental damage. Surface Engineers apply treatments such as coating, plating, heat treatment, or laser modification to optimize surface characteristics for applications in industries like aerospace, automotive, energy, and manufacturing.

The main duties of a surface engineer are to:

• Research and develop surface treatment techniques such as electroplating, thermal spraying, anodizing, or thin-film deposition.
• Analyze material performance and surface integrity using microscopy, spectroscopy, and hardness testing.
• Design and implement coating or surface modification processes to meet specific technical requirements.
• Collaborate with design and production teams to select suitable surface treatments for new products.
• Test and evaluate coatings for resistance to wear, corrosion, and temperature extremes.
• Ensure compliance with safety, environmental, and quality control standards in surface engineering processes.
• Investigate surface failures or defects and recommend corrective actions.
• Document procedures, maintain equipment, and prepare technical reports and specifications.
• Stay informed about emerging materials, nanotechnology, and advanced surface engineering techniques.

The following job titles also refer to surface engineer:

surface engineers
surface engineering equipment technician
surface technology engineering expert
surface engineering specialist
surface engineering expert
surface engineering adviser
surface technology engineering consultant
engineering operative
corrosion engineer
surface technology engineering specialist
heavy equipment operative
surface engineering consultant
engineering operator
surface engineering technician
surface technology engineering adviser
surface engineering operator
surface equipment operator
surface engineering worker
surface engineering operative
surface technology engineer

Surface Engineers work in laboratories, manufacturing plants, or research facilities, often dividing their time between experimental testing and process supervision. The role involves working with specialized equipment and chemicals, requiring strict adherence to safety protocols. While standard office hours are typical, project deadlines or production schedules may occasionally require extended hours. Collaboration with multidisciplinary teams is common, and site visits to suppliers or clients may be part of the job.

A bachelor’s degree in materials science, metallurgy, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, or a related field is typically required to become a Surface Engineer. Strong knowledge of material properties, surface chemistry, and coating technologies is essential. Practical experience through laboratory work, internships, or industrial placements is highly beneficial. Professionals often enhance their expertise through postgraduate study or industry certifications in materials engineering or corrosion science. Membership in professional organizations such as the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) or ASM International can support career advancement.

ISCO skill level is defined as a function of the complexity and range of tasks and duties to be performed in an occupation. It is measured on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 the lowest level and 4 the highest, by considering:

• the nature of the work performed in an occupation in relation to the characteristic tasks and duties
• the level of formal education required for competent performance of the tasks and duties involved and
• the amount of informal on-the-job training and/or previous experience in a related occupation required for competent performance of these tasks and duties.

Surface engineer is a Skill level 4 occupation.

These occupations, although different, require a lot of knowledge and skills similar to surface engineer.

flight test engineer
test engineer
fire prevention and protection engineer
equipment engineer
container equipment design engineer

This knowledge should be acquired through learning to fulfill the role of surface engineer.

• Production processes: Materials and techniques required in the production and distribution processes.
• Corrosion types: The various types of oxidation reactions with the environment, such as rusting, copper pitting, stress cracking, and others.
• Engineering principles: The engineering elements like functionality, replicability, and costs in relation to the design and how they are applied in the completion of engineering projects.
• Manufacturing processes: The steps required through which a material is transformed into a product, its development and full-scale manufacturing.
• Mathematics: Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. It involves the identification of patterns and formulating new conjectures based on them. Mathematicians strive to prove the truth or falsity of these conjectures. There are many fields of mathematics, some of which are widely used for practical applications.
• Technical drawings: Drawing software and the various symbols, perspectives, units of measurement, notation systems, visual styles and page layouts used in technical drawings.
• Engineering processes: The systematic approach to the development and maintenance of engineering systems.
• Industrial engineering: The field of engineering concerned with the development, improvement, and implementation of complex processes and systems of knowledge, people, equipment, etc.
• Surface engineering: The engineering discipline that studies ways to counteract environmental deterioration, such as corrosion and deformation of surfaces of materials, by altering the properties of the surfaces and making them resistant to the environment in which they will be used.

These skills are necessary for the role of surface engineer.

• Execute analytical mathematical calculations: Apply mathematical methods and make use of calculation technologies in order to perform analyses and devise solutions to specific problems.
• Adjust engineering designs: Adjust designs of products or parts of products so that they meet requirements.
• Perform scientific research: Gain, correct or improve knowledge about phenomena by using scientific methods and techniques, based on empirical or measurable observations.
• Use technical drawing software: Create technical designs and technical drawings using specialised software.
• Approve engineering design: Give consent to the finished engineering design to go over to the actual manufacturing and assembly of the product.

This knowledge is sometimes, but not always, required for the role of surface engineer. However, mastering this knowledge allows you to have more opportunities for career development.

• Soldering techniques: The various techniques for joining pieces of metal together by melting and applying a filler metal into the joint between the two pieces such as silver soldering and induction soldering.
• Materials science: Field of science and engineering that researches new materials on the basis of their structure, properties, synthesis, and performance for a variety of purposes, including increasing fire resistance of construction materials.
• Material mechanics: The behaviour of solid objects when subjected to stresses and strains, and the methods to calculate these stresses and strains.
• Electrical engineering: Understand electrical engineering, a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism.
• Ferrous metal processing: Various processing methods on iron and iron-containing alloys such as steel, stainless steel and pig iron.
• Welding techniques: The different methods of welding together pieces of metal using various equipment, such as oxygen-acetylene welding, gas metal arc welding and tungsten inert gas welding.
• Hazardous waste types: The different types of waste which poses risks to the environment or public health and safety, such as radioactive waste, chemicals and solvents, electronics, and mercury-containing waste.
• Physics: The natural science involving the study of matter, motion, energy, force and related notions.
• Environmental legislation: The environmental policies and legislation applicable in a certain domain.
• Non-destructive testing: The techniques used to assess the characteristics of materials, products and systems without causing damage, such as ultrasonic, radiographic, and remote visual inspection and testing.
• Types of metal: Qualities, specifications, applications and reactions to different fabricating processes of various types of metal, such as steel, aluminium, brass, copper and others.
• Mechanical engineering: Discipline that applies principles of physics, engineering and materials science to design, analyse, manufacture and maintain mechanical systems.
• Chemistry: The composition, structure, and properties of substances and the processes and transformations that they undergo; the uses of different chemicals and their interactions, production techniques, risk factors, and disposal methods.
• Semiconductors: Semiconductors are essential components of electronic circuits and contain properties of both insulators, such as glass, and conductors, such as copper. Most semiconductors are crystals made of silicon or germanium. By introducing other elements in the crystal through doping, the crystals turn into semiconductors. Depending on the amount of electrons created by the doping process, the crystals turn into N-type semiconductors, or P-type semiconductors.

These skills and competences are sometimes, but not always, required for the role of surface engineer. However, mastering these skills and competences allows you to have more opportunities for career development.

• Record test data: Record data which has been identified specifically during preceding tests in order to verify that outputs of the test produce specific results or to review the reaction of the subject under exceptional or unusual input.
• Develop material testing procedures: Develop testing protocols in collaboration with engineers and scientists to enable a variety of analyses such as environmental, chemical, physical, thermal, structural, resistance or surface analyses on a wide range of materials such as metals, ceramics or plastics.
• Analyse test data: Interpret and analyse data collected during testing in order to formulate conclusions, new insights or solutions.
• Use non-destructive testing equipment: Use specific non-destructive testing methods and equipment that do not cause any damage to the product, such as X-rays, ultrasonic testing, magnetic particle inspection, industrial CT scanning and others, in order to find defects in and assure quality of a manufactured and a repaired product.
• Analyse stress resistance of materials: Analyse the ability of materials to endure stress imposed by temperature, loads, motion, vibration, and other factors using mathematical formulae and computer simulations.
• Recognise signs of corrosion: Recognise the symptoms of metal showing oxidation reactions with the environment resulting in rusting, copper pitting, stress cracking, and others, and estimate the rate of corrosion.

2141 – Industrial and production engineers

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 References

1. Surface engineer – ESCO